Towards a Zero-Carbon Future
Low Carbon Hub’s Business Plan 2024–25 is an essential step in our long-term strategy and beyond. It outlines the immediate actions we’ll take to achieve our vision of a just, fair, and zero-carbon energy system, while adapting to the ongoing uncertainty in UK energy policy.
Barbara Hammond, MBE, our Chief Executive Officer, provides an insightful introduction to the challenges, opportunities, and partnerships that shape this plan, setting the stage for our ambitious goals:
“Our strategy to 2035 sets out a challenging ambition for Low Carbon Hub, working with our network of community shareholders and local stakeholders. This business plan outlines our first steps towards meeting that challenge.
The energy policy environment in the UK remains uncertain following the change in government in July 2024. In response, we have developed this business plan to be as flexible as possible, starting from a known baseline. Achieving our ambition to grow our portfolio to 165 MW – necessary to meet our stretch scenario and fund our community benefit work through to 2050 – will require strong national policy backing. Greater clarity on policies addressing SME and domestic carbon reduction and demand management is also essential for us to build effective programmes that help communities decarbonise the grid edge while transitioning to renewable heat and power.
If national policy does not evolve in the way we hope, we can still have a significant impact by working with the renewable energy portfolio we currently have. However, this will make us far more dependent on effective partnerships with our local stakeholders, as we would be less able to ‘go it alone’. We are fortunate to have benefited from consistent leadership by local authorities in Oxfordshire and a deeply committed innovation ecosystem in the region. This willingness to collaborate has been essential to the Low Carbon Hub’s success and has helped establish Oxfordshire as a national leader in addressing climate challenges.
We are proud that the Low Carbon Hub can now offer its own resources to support these partnerships, enabling us to play a clear and consistent role for the benefit of all our 50 community shareholders, right through to 2050 and beyond.
By the end of this Business Plan 2024–25 period, we will have a clearer understanding of our trajectory and the partnerships we can count on. Wish us luck on this journey – we’ll report back in 2028!”